Endorsements

"With great clarity and compelling narrative, Bud Heckman and his contributors bring into sharp focus the well-intentioned but too often fuzzily-defined world of interfaith activity. Whether you are a pastor preparing your first interfaith service bulletin, a community activist rallying religious leaders to a cause, or a curious but confused private citizen seeking the basics on an increasingly religiously diverse world, this book is the place to begin."
-The Rev. Chloe Breyer
Executive Director
The Interfaith Center of New York

"A must read book for interfaith community builders and peacemakers focusing on dialogue, service, and advocacy."
- Dr. Tarunjit Singh Butalia
Moderator, Religions for Peace - USA
Chair, National Interfaith Committee
World Sikh Council - America Region

"Now more than ever faith leaders are crossing ideological divides to address issues of common concern like poverty, climate change, and peace. InterActive Faith is a critical resource for those leading their communities past intolerance and fear into hope, understanding, and social change. The guide is at once practical and poetic. It inspires the reader while providing cutting edge methods to help communities build trust and celebrate our diversity and common goals.”
-Rev. Jennifer Butler
Executive Director
Faith in Public Life

"InterActive Faith throws open the door to the new interreligious America at the grassroots level. A worthy successor to its pioneering predecessor, Beversluis’ Sourcebook of the World’s Religions (1993), this new handbook is chock full of information, compelling stories, good advice, and resources… it is the best primer to interfaith dialogue and relationships in print today."
-Rev. Paul Chaffee
Executive Director
Interfaith Center at the Presidio

"InterActive Faith offers the reader an excellent primer on how to effectively and appreciatively engage neighbors of different faiths.  While it is true that our society is becoming more and more religiouslydiverse,and while it is also true that members of this society are getting more and more used to this fact, it is not necessarily true that we are learning how to genuinely understand one another.  This book helps to do just that.  And what I particularly appreciate is how it does so by exploring and even expanding upon the three basic categories of interreligious interaction:  immersion, dialogue and collaboration.  The reader will therefore find this to be an invaluable resource as he or she seeks to maintain a sense of community even as that community changes."
- Dr. Antonios Kireopoulos,
Senior Program Director for Faith & Order and Interfaith Relations
National Council of Churches of Christ, USA

"If you’re in any way concerned about helping religions to communicate and cooperate with each other, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better help-mate than this little handbook.  It truly is what it wants to be – a very practical guide to both understanding and practicing interreligious dialogue. The book clearly lays out the possibilities and practicalities of multiple ways of bringing religious believers together – through communication, art, ritual, advocacy, activism.  For anyone who wants to make interreligious collaboration a reality in civil society, this handbook will be immensely helpful.”
- Paul F. Knitter, PhD
Paul Tillich Professor of Theology, World Religions, and Culture
Union Theological Seminary, New York City

"There are many books about interfaith discussion, but Interactive Faith is unique. It is an impressive and comprehensive guide to the practical issues involved in interreligious dialogue, relations and projects. It will prove a treasure for anyone beginning to explore the rich experience of interfaith cooperation."
- Rabbi Eugene Korn, PhD.
Executive Director
Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation

"InterActive Faith is bound to be an essential desk reference for religious leaders seeking to work together across lines of faith.  Its illustrative models and extensive resources are inspiring to all those who want to lovingly work for interreligious cooperation.”
-V. Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky
Executive Director of Ecumenical Affairs
Orthodox Church of America

“InterActive Faith is a book that can make a dramatic difference.  With a range of contributors who are right at the heart of the interreligious movement, this book is a practical ‘how-to’ text that can enable communities to think constructively about religious difference in conversation across the divides.  Anyone seriously interested in dialogue and peace between the different religious traditions must read this book.”
- The Very Rev Ian Markham PhD,
Dean and President of Virginia Theological Seminary

"Times have never been in greater need of this book. And it's not likely that a better person  could have been found to produce it. It is rich, insightful and practical. I highly recommend it.”
-Mr. Edward J. Murray
President and Chief Executive Officer
Faith and Values Media

“The burgeoning movement for religious cooperation needs resources that can be guideposts on the journey.  InterActive Faith is an essential reference for interfaith work from a country where religious pluralism is coming of age.  It offers models and methods from respected leaders in the field.  I highly recommend it.”
-Rev. Dr. Shanta Premawardhana 
Director, Inter-religious Dialogue and Cooperation
World Council of Churches

“Forging a path that embraces activism with thoughtfulness, inspired urgency for change with respect for the historical anchorages of tradition, and grounded practice with idealist aspiration, this book is a treasure chest of positive delights for everyone involved in interreligious work.  It is an ideas manual and a spur to good interreligious relations, both of which are essential for anyone trying to find their way through the thicket of what to do and how to think about it in today’s blossoming field of interreligious endeavours.  With this handbook the interfaith movement demonstrates its emerging maturity.” 
- Canon Dr. Alan Race,
Dean of Postgraduate Studies
St. Philip’s Centre, Leicester, UK

"This is a book that lives up to its title:  It is accessible as a good handbook should be; it connects us to the excitement of its authors in living what they are talking about; and it offers a wide array of ideas for joining with neighbors of other faiths in active collaboration.  The voices that speak to us in this volume come from a diversity of religious traditions and out of many different kinds of experience, inviting us into a lively engagement in the work of weaving our faith communities more closely together, in respect for one another, and in order to work more effectively for peace and justice.  This will be a very useful book both for those already involved in interfaith work, and for those who want to learn more about it."
-Rev. Dr. Jay Rock
Coordinator, Inter-Faith Relations
Presbyterian Church USA

“This invaluable resource is sorely needed in a world that is still struggling to adapt to its increasing complexity and diversity. There is no better way to embrace our differences than to be deeply and sensitively educated about one another and about our shared purpose as peoples of faith.  InterActive Faith is a very thoughtful and useful way to help individuals and communities to engage in dialogue and embrace our shared values to help make our world more whole.”
- Rabbi Amy Joy Small
Past President, Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association,
Rabbi of Congregation Beth Hatikvah, Summit, NJ

“InterActive Faith is a must read for those of us involved in national faith-based organizations and an excellent guide for working in our local communities. It has a wealth of background information and a very useful  resource section.  The guidelines for language use  is very important for our dialogue in multi-faith  groups. Our communication colleagues will find this a very important book to have in their library for reference.”
-Ms. Shirley Whipple Struchen
Executive Director
Religion Communicators Counci

“The fears about interfaith dialogue have been either that it can dilute our own faith through aggressive relativism or at best it can be a futile exercise in superficiality. InterActive Faith shows how practically dialogue can deepen our understanding and practice of our own faith traditions and at the same time help us to develop an understanding and respect for the faith traditions of others.”
- Dr. Sayyid M. Syeed
National Director
Interfaith and Community Alliance
Islamic Society of North America
                                                                                                                            
“From its first page to the last, InterActive Faith is full of concrete nitty-gritty wisdom about and for interfaith dialogue. The authors represented are leading lights in their respective areas of expertise; each brings years of extensive experience, institutional know-how and creativity to the work of interfaith dialogue. While InterActive Faith accurately bills itself as a practical how-to guide for interfaith dialogue—and it surely is the best of its kind—the book is also rooted in substantive scholarship and can be employed fruitfully in courses on interreligious dialogue in colleges and seminaries to provide students with a deep introduction to the "on the ground" practice of interfaith dialogue. Mosques, churches, synagogues, temples, and interfaith groups at every level will find in this book a treasure trove of resources for getting about the work of building community through interfaith living. No religious community that aspires to neighborliness can afford to do without this invaluable resource.”
-John J. Thatamanil, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Theology
Vanderbilt University Divinity School
Comparative Studies Area Editor, Religious Studies Review

“We live in a paradoxical situation in interreligious relations today.  While there is a renewed interest and a significant increase in programs that promote interreligious conversation and cooperation, we are baffled and saddened by the continued persistence of interreligious hatred and violence in the world.  Such a paradox often paralyses us into either cynicism or inaction.  Bud Heckman and Rori Picker Neiss, in this handbook, draw us out of such paralysis and offer us the most helpful tools to initiate, sustain, and promote an “interactive faith” that does not shy away from intense and intentional involvement in interreligious community-building activity.

Heckman and Neiss have succeeded in bringing together the wisdom of so many practitioner-thinkers of interreligious dialogue and offer a real boost to the efforts of all those who are committed to a just and peaceful world.  There is a wealth of information on the various religions of the world, a spread of the rich resources available for an interactive faith, and a set of helpful and hands-on guidelines for engaging and enabling a community of conversation.  Leonard Swidler’s “Dialogue Decalogue” comes alive in this book in the most powerful and persuasive manner.
This book is able to draw us out of our communities of confrontation and competition to a community of conversation and cooperation.  You do not have to be a believer in or a practitioner of interreligious community-building to read this book; you will certainly become one as you finish reading it.  If you are already involved in such activities, you will gain a broader vision, a deeper understanding, and a renewed commitment to interactive faith.”
- The Rev. Dr. M. Thomas Thangaraj
D. W. & Ruth Brooks Associate Professor of World Christianity
Candler School of Theology
Emory University

"This is an essential reference book for anyone seeking to engage in interfaith dialogue in any of its diverse forms.  While it guides us to acknowledge real differences in belief, it also invites us into solidarity of action in the expanding domain of what Religions for Peace calls our ‘deeply held, widely shared’ cares.”
Dr. William Vendley,
Secretary General, Religions for Peace

"This book in particular is a must read for everyone interested in inter/intra/multi faith activities/dialogue.  Having known the editor for his quest for learning, desire to be fair and judicious, and being hard working for the project he undertakes; I can assure the readers that this is truly a good reference book." 
Mr. Arvind Vora
Chairman, Long Island Multi Faith Forum,
Chairman, Interreligious Committee of the Federation of Jain Associations in North America.